


dissolution

by Amber



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Bad Poetry, Blow Jobs, Bondage, Breaking Up & Making Up, Do Not Archive, Injury Recovery, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-26 00:23:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13846158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amber/pseuds/Amber
Summary: The centre cannot hold.Jon and Martin come together, come apart.





	dissolution

**Author's Note:**

  * For [majormajormajormajor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/majormajormajormajor/gifts).



> This one's for Autumn, who is vital.
> 
> Standard disclaimer: Please don't link this to the creators. Please don't repost my fic on other websites. Transformative works or quotes with a link are fine and you don't need to tell me or ask permission (but I would love to know!)

In his dreams, Jon kisses Martin half a hundred different ways, but the first time isn't anything like any of them at all.

-

"Sorry," Basira says quietly, "But I am still here, you know."

The two of them spring apart: Martin is visibly mortified; Jon's poker face is better, but his ears are scarlet. 

"Er, sorry, Basira," Jon says, trying not to sound too husky. "I didn't, we didn't see you there."

She holds up her book on occult symbolism of bees throughout history. "Did you know the Institute used to keep bees?" she asks, as Martin tucks his shirt back in. "Back when it was custom to tell them everything. You know, weddings, funerals, the major events."

Martin grins. "So you could say they were 'Bee-holding'?"

"I'm leaving," says Jon, straight-faced as Basira laughs. "I'm leaving, goodbye."

"Are you making fun of Jon without me?" inquires Melanie, drawn from the back-room storage closet by the sound of laughter.

"Now _hang on_ \--" Jon tries, but is overruled. It strikes him, watching his assistants banter, that there's something about Martin's face in this moment, some tightness or tension that he is only now noticing by its absence. Their eyes catch while he's looking, and it's like an electric shock.

Yes, thinks Jon. Yes please.

-

It's a terrible idea. It's a _terrible_ idea. It happens anyway.

-

Martin has said he sometimes feels too big for his own skin, ungainly, but Jonathan thinks he's perfect. He's never felt like this with any of his ex-girlfriends, so completely captivated by someone else's body, though he's trying his best to avoid thinking about if that means anything. All he wants to think about is Martin. The lines and slope of him, muscle shifting under skin. The errant hairs and freckles. The way Martin's nipples scrunch when Jon pinches them, knotting up in pleasure. The weight of his balls in a cupped hand, the puppyish oversized feet. The soft fold of his belly, the divot of his collarbone, his laugh lines, his knobbled knees, his hands -- his hands most of all.

Once, Martin is on the phone to his mother, and Jon turns to ask him something, and Martin holds his hand out for quiet, presses a finger over Jon's lips to button them. But Jon just takes it into his mouth, skin-salt and solid, slides fully down the length of it and sucks.

"Bye mum," says Martin. "Love you mum, gotta go, sorry, sorry, yeah it's urgent, sorry, bye."

-

Martin worries. That's just a fact of the universe. Martin is a consummate worrier, and ever since he took up with Jon he's had plenty to worry about. Jon, who lives a dangerous and abnormal life and takes it (by this point) as par for the course, Jon tries to be reassuring, when he remembers to be; tries to say "I love you," as much as possible because it papers over a lot of spiderweb cracks; tries to call if he's going to be late so he doesn't find Martin sitting up at 2am, ghostly with terror and fury. Jon mostly worries that eventually one of them will get sick of all this hopeless trying.

"I love you," he tells Martin, meaning it, as Martin hands him the files he's brought back from the Archives for Jonathan to peruse at home, because someone (something) has once again dangerously incapacitated him.

Martin sighs, long-suffering, but he smiles, too.

-

Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, does not make for an easy patient.

"Honestly," Martin says in exasperation, changing his bandages early (again) because the wound broke open (again). "Do I have to tie you to this bed for you to get some rest?"

It's rhetorical, obviously. Jon looks at him sidelong, quiet. "No," he says eventually.

It's not very convincing.

-

"Get in."

Jon slides into the passenger seat of his own car, the door shutting sharply against the evening drizzle. He's damp, face blanched with pain. Martin's whiteknuckling the wheel, staring ahead into the middle distance, collecting himself for a moment before he finally pushes the accelerator to take them home.

"Martin," Jon starts, but Martin shakes his head.

"Don't," he says. "Just-- don't, all right?"

They drive home in silence, the tires splashing through the puddles of the London streets. Jon looks out the window, watches as one bead of water moves along the glass with the force of the acceleration, the droplet sliding to consume another, and then another, growing.

When they park, Martin comes around to Jon's side of the car, hovers as he watches Jon ease himself out and upright again. For his part, Jon's mouth has gone stubborn, and even though he asked to be collected because he knew he wouldn't make it home on the tube, he's still determined to climb every stair in his building without assistance. He only makes it to the third landing before he stops, though, eyes squeezed shut, panting quietly as he locks his elbow where he holds the railing and lets that keep him upright. But Martin is there, too, sliding an arm around his waist.

"Here," he murmurs, none of his underset anger in his voice. "I've got you, Jon. I've got you."

-

"I just want you to let me know! That's all I ask, Jon!" Martin shouts, and then looks surprised by his own volume. Jon wonders if his neighbors are home, if they'll listen, if they'll talk. 

"If I tell you," he tries to reason, even-toned counterpoint, "You'll try and stop me -- or you'll want to _come along_ ," as though that would be the worst fate in the world, Martin following him eagerly to a meeting between monsters, like the children and the piper, like the sacrificial lamb. Come into my parlour, Martin Blackwood. It's the sort of thing he imagines a lot.

"And would it be so bad if I did? I know how to take care of myself -- who was it who had corkscrews and CO2 on hand. Who was it who survived in the tunnels, when, when--" he draws in a shaky breath, indignation faltering. Closes his eyes. Jon is a migraine, sometimes.

"There are some things I have to do alone," Jon says firmly, case closed.

Martin bunches up his fists all ineffective. "Please," he tries, dialing it down. "Please just leave a note, next time. Or text. Or… Jon, I didn't know, I thought, you could have been dead..."

Shit. "Don't cry," Jon says, and he's shorter and smaller but he can still take Martin into his arms, and he's never had anyone broken up over him like this, angry with how much they love him, holds it at a confused distance even as he lets Martin clutch close. "Shh, shh," he murmurs, mindful of his injuries as he strokes the soft wisps of hair at the back of Martin's neck. "It's all right. I love you."

-

In his dream, Jon brings Martin to the door, and knocks.

"I've brought you my heart," he says.

-

Martin uses his tongue so gently, just barely-pressed kitten licks up the side of Jon's cock, letting it shape over the head. He kisses there, the insides of his lips so, so soft as they slide over the crown, over the ridge, suckle lightly. Jon tries to move his hips for more and Martin stops, looks up, hand pressed over the jut of his hipbone.

"You said you could be still."

"I - I can," Jon promises, because he's barely had anything but he's so hard, cock a bright arch of lust that it almost embarrasses him to look at. If there's still pain, it's secondary to the sensation of being undone.

"I don't want to hurt you," Martin explains again, and then - sweetest agony, presses a chaste little kiss to the damp head of Jon's dick. His thumb is stroking idly near the base, the fold of skin just above his balls, ticklish and fantastically arousing. His tongue laves the good-sharp place where Jon's foreskin joins. Jon cries out, hurt despite Martin's best intentions, not the stupid flesh wound but something deep-running and vulnerable.

"Please," he says, quiet, plaintive. Presses the meat of his fist down hard as he can into the mattress, arm all ropy with restraint. "I don't have a groin injury, Martin. Just--"

And Martin, pleased, does.

He's generous right up until the end, and then he makes Jon beg for it again, as his hand twists over electric nerves and then away again, leaving Jon to tap helplessly against his own stomach. Jon has no more embarrassment left to stifle the noises that are forced out of his chest every time Martin touches him. There's nothing but the knowledge of how close he is, how in reach that perfect crest, how, god, fuck, "Martin, please."

He comes like a slap into Martin's barely-apologetic mouth, every spasm wrung out of him, and breathes like a racehorse after as his body tries to recreate that single perfect point of climax and instead slowly descends. 

"Fuck," breathes Jon, slightly reverent, and winces as Martin pets him a little, nuzzles and strokes his poor cock until it's soft again. "Do you want," he offers belatedly, half-hearted with exhaustion, and Martin smiles and kisses the worn-out pink curl of him.

"No," he says quietly. "No. I'm fine. Go to sleep."

Jon realizes belatedly how effectively he's been forced into bedrest, murmurs, "You're a monster." But his eyes are so heavy, and Martin climbs the pale length of his body to wrap protective and warm around it, and he's sinking into the mattress with satiation, sinking down into sleep.

-

Strings, by Martin K.

You have me tangled again  
Tangled in your suffocating strings  
I wind them round your wrists  
Tight, tight, and you insist  
I've bound you  
But you have missed it's me  
Unable to get free.

-

The garbage bag on the table between them seems innocuous enough, but Jon is looking at it with as much dread as Tim is.

"Do you want to, boss, or will I?" Tim asks, and then, "Actually, don't answer that, because I don't care. You've got seniority, you do it."

"I don't think that works the way you think it does," Jon mutters, but he's rolling up his shirtsleeves nevertheless. The contents of the bag are wet and fetid against his skin, and he closes his eyes, suppresses a retch. It doesn't smell unpleasant, is the worst thing, sweet and savory, like caramelizing pork. His mouth waters despite himself.

He wipes his hands down after with a cloth, as Tim does his part and counts the coins they've retrieved. But: "Are those," Tim says, and he's not talking about the artifact, is looking at Jon's wrists. "Did you--?"

Jon's ears go red. "I- I- er. It's nothing," he says hurriedly, trying to cover the marks with a towel.

"But it looks like you've been--" Tim tries again, but then realization dawns when he looks at Jon's expression instead of the chafing and he gives a horrified little laugh. "Oh, wow. Yeah, uh, I _really_ didn't need to know that about either of you, thanks." He tips the coins into a plastic evidence bag, seals it, still shaking his head. "But whatever, I mean, so long as you're fine with it."

"Yes, _thank you_ , Tim, I promise you there is nothing going on that I didn't fully _agree_ to--"

"Right, great, excellent, now let's never ever talk about it again," Tim says immediately, done. So very done.

Jon's a little more careful with his sleeves from that point on.

-

"I don't want to read any more statements," Martin says into the silence. Summer is receding, but it's given them one last warm day, and they're sprawled mostly undressed on the bed, legs and arms overlapping as Jon reads a book on Mesopotamia and Martin browses social media on his phone. Jon has set up a cheap box fan and it whirs away complacently.

The way he says it, certain and a little afraid, has Jon looking over, letting the book splay over his bare chest. "You don't have to."

"That's the thing, though, isn't it? I do. I really-- and it's not even about the things that could end the world, or making a dint in the workload, or whatever else. I just, I need it now." His brow is pinched, and Jon puts the book aside entirely and rolls towards him (careful, because that's his bad shoulder, even though it's mostly healed now.) "I know you know what I mean."

The first step of dealing with an addiction is admitting you have a problem. "I do," Jon says, touching his face, fingers brushing along the boyish roundness of his jaw, the curve of his slightly big ears. "Of course I do. The way it pulls at you -- why do you think I worked through mandated bedrest?"

"Yeah," Martin says, "Yeah, I can understand that now, I think."

"Sorry," says Jon. Martin huffs.

"It's hardly your fault, is it?" He rolls too, and they face each other across the flat pillow. Martin presses his hand flat over Jon's breastbone, then smooths it up to his neck. "We're both just fingers on a hand, right."

"Or flies in a web," Jon says darkly. 

"I hate it, Jon," Martin admits, his big puppy eyes wetly miserable. "I've had some shit jobs before, and this one should be all right by comparison-- I know I um, I wasn't very good to begin with, but I have the hang of it now? And I quite _like_ research. Filing. Databases. Being useful to you. And I like Tim, and Basira, and I suppose even Melanie's all right, but--" he cuts himself off abruptly, breath pressed through a frustrated grit of teeth. "I hate it. I wake up and I think, god, I hope I get in some terrible accident so I don't have to go in today."

Oh. "Don't say that," says Jon, more perturbed by that than a statement full of meat and teeth. His hand on Martin's face is worried, now, cupping his cheek.

"It's true, though. I'm not saying I'd -- I'd do anything, don't look at me like that, but, I dunno, that's just how I feel about it." Martin curls fingers around his wrist, thumbing over the blue veins beneath the translucent skin. Jon shivers, distracted from concern despite himself. "I don't want to read anymore statements."

"All right," Jon murmurs, a promise that isn't his to make. Martin's fingers tighten promisingly, and they kiss.

-

In his dream, Jon moves from desk to desk with the golden lighter in his hand, such an insignificant little flame. He holds it to the corners of manilla folders and cardboard boxes until they smolder and then catch. He lights up the little desk calendar Melanie keeps, and the heavy green curtains he hates, and anything, anything that looks flammable, a dozen little fires springing up behind him. Then one spreads enough to eat another and they grow.

-

It's like scenting a coming storm: Jon knows there's going to be an argument before there is one. He paces in his office, caged and waiting.

"What does this mean?" Martin asks, storming into Jon's office, brandishing the letter at him. "A transfer? We're barely getting through the work as it is, you can't just, have me, have me _transferred_ , Jon." His voice cracks.

It would be nice to be able to protest that this isn't his fault, that it's Elias' signature on the bottom of the letter, but if he owes Martin anything then it's honesty. "I just think you might be more suited--"

"I _like_ research, you know I like research!"

"--To the work of a different department. Martin. _Martin_." Jon takes him by the shoulders, looks him in the eye. "Elias made it very clear that I am where and what I am today by my own choices. Which means you can still choose to escape it. Or escape -- this, at least." It's still the Magnus Institute, which is basically the Hotel California at this point, but it's safe. Accounts don't have to read statements, or handle Leitners, or catch two busses to check hospital records for a gruesome death eight years ago.

"You're trying to protect me," Martin says, and he doesn't sound pleased about it, mouth gone hard around the edges. "Again."

"I'm _trying_ \--" starts Jon, but Martin holds his hand out for quiet, presses a finger on Jon's lips to button them.

"Shut up, please. You always do this, you do, it's like you think it's all right for you to go rushing off into danger and leave me behind, when, when, when it's not a choice I want you, or anyone, making for me." His eyes flash — the worst part is how Martin is somehow always spectacularly handsome when he's angry, firmed jaw and darkened brow and determined intensity. "I'm not a little kid, Jon, I'm your boyfriend. Or I was."

When he drops the hand, Jon doesn't say anything for a moment, looking slapped: eyes wide, colour high, aggrieved. "You said you wanted-- because you hate the statements, you wanted--"

"I do! I do hate the statements." Martin runs a frustrated hand through his hair. "But I do them, we all do, because we're in it together. Shared burdens and all that. You can't just _bench_ me because-- because--"

"I love you," says Jon, hopelessly.

"Yeah," Martin says, a little more calmly but no less furious. "That's um, that's probably the problem, isn't it."

It's a fish-hook hurt, sharp in his vulnerable places and dragging him forward, unerringly, out of his comfort zone. This is not the first time Jon has asked: "Are you breaking up with me?" of someone, because he's never been a good boyfriend, too distracted by other projects, too sharp, too relentlessly selfish. It's the first time he's really cared about the answer.

"Sorry," Martin says, always a compulsive apologizer. "I just. I just really, really need a break. Sorry."

"Don't cry," says Jon, wounded, but Martin ducks away when he reaches for him and is gone.

-

Jon speaks to Elias. Elias speaks to Martin. Martin takes two weeks approved vacation. There is no more talk of a transfer.

-

Martin's apartment in Stockwell is _dismal_. It's a rough part of town, and the door to his building has a busted lock, so Jon can just walk in. He can hear a baby crying as he climbs the stairs, and someone's telly turned up too loud. There's a fungal smell in the stairwell, and outside Martin's door the carpet has streaky bleach stains, probably from Prentiss. He knocks. Martin doesn't have a peephole, but apparently he does have a dozen locks and chains, so it takes a while for him to open the door enough to see Jon, and longer to let him in.

Inside isn't much better: flaking paint, water stains on the ceiling, old appliances. Martin's done his best, but he's not much of an interior decorator, and on top of that the place is a bit of a mess. "Christ," Jon says. "No wonder you never invited me back to yours."

"Are you just here to insult my apartment?" Martin asks, but he looks more tired than angry. Rough around the edges, a week's worth of sparse stubble and a stain on his tshirt.

"I'm here to apologize," replies Jon.

-

Rain, by Martin K.

I miss you the most when it's raining.  
I don't know why.  
I miss you the most when it's grey outside.  
Drip, drip, drip.  
Sometimes I wake up  
And I've forgotten you're not there  
And I reach into the empty space  
Where I wish your body would wait  
Where you're wanted.  
Drip, drip, drip.  
I miss you a lot when I'm tired  
Or when someone is smoking Silk Cuts  
Or when the door accidentally slams shut.  
But most of all when it's raining.  
Drip, drip, drip.  
My roof's leaking again.

-

Everything they like to use is still at Jon's place, so Martin takes the belt off an old terrycloth dressing gown (green, he explains, because "I wanted to be Arthur Dent so badly as a kid") and it's worn and soft around Jon's wrists. Martin's bed is expansive by necessity, and he ties capable knots to bind Jon to the headboard.

"Is that okay?" he asks softly, testing them with little tugs. "Too tight? Tell me if it's too tight."

"I will," Jon reassures him. Martin is always solicitous like this, even though Jon is never shy about speaking up on his own behalf, if he's in pain or needs to slow down or is just frankly disinterested.

Martin touches himself first, and Jon watches greedily, as fixated on the way his chest flushes and his eyes avert as the private movement of his hand. He still hasn't grown tired of all the idiosyncrasies of Martin's body, a book that he could read over and over and find it different every time.

"I want to touch you," Jon murmurs, aching for it, and Martin smiles a little.

"Probably shouldn't've gone and let me tie up your hands, then." 

Jon snorts a laugh and his head falls back. Shifts restlessly in his bindings, but that's good too, the reminder that he's restrained, that he has to wait patiently for whatever Martin wants to give him. 

What Martin wants is both generous and uncomplicated: he stretches over Jon, dips to drink long, slow kisses from his mouth, takes both of them in his big lube-slicked hands. It's languid despite the fact that it's been a couple of weeks since they last had sex, Martin just taking the time to enjoy himself, to enjoy the feel of Jon, responsive and needy beneath him.

-

"Do you love me?" Jon asks in the afterglow, Martin tracing over his scars.

"Of course I love you, Jon," Martin says promptly. 

Is the immediate desire to answer natural? Just part of how much he's feeling right now? When it spills out of him, does he wish he could pull it back? The blood-dimmed tide is loose--

-

Martin sells his terrible apartment and moves all his things in with Jon. It's difficult, when the man has such exacting standards for organization and cleanliness, has arranged his flat so that everything has a place. Puts his handful of books on the shelves of Jon's library, and soon enough they're swallowed up in it, a part of the larger entity.

"I don't understand why you don't have a television," Martin says, legs in Jon's lap as he browses the newspaper's TV guide wistfully.

"There's nothing I want to watch that I couldn't watch perfectly well on my laptop," Jon replies, fiddling with the tape recorder. "Besides, I prefer books." Not that he's reading now, too strangely preoccupied. Backwards, forwards. The same little loop of blank tape. His thumb clicking on the buttons. He recorded a statement earlier. He wants to record again. 

No. Not wants. Needs.

-

`@ Botanical Gardens chasing a statement. Will be late. Don't wait up. x`

`Sent from my iPhone`

-

As Jon's output increases and the piles of statements decrease, there's a return to the norm: Jon is once more the only one of them who records the tape recorder statements. The other assistants don't say it, but they're relieved; they all work extra hard on the research end of things out of sheer gratefulness, even Tim.

"I don't even feel the urge anymore," Martin tells Jon over dinner, bright-eyed despite the dark circles beneath them. "I think I might even be able to go back to recording my poetry without feeling sick about it."

Jon's made lamb, and it's good, tender, but he's only picking at it, pushing the vegetables listlessly around his plate. His appetite is shot, lately, eating a pointless and repetitive motion he has to go through. "That's good," he agrees absently, though then seems to have a thought: "Maybe use your phone, though, and not one of the tape recorders."

"Yeah," agrees Martin, watching him and worrying. 'Probably for the best."

-

Jude had known: love is like a fire, leaving destruction in its wake. (The only way she found to stop burning through what she loved was to turn it back on herself. Consume for your god or it will consume you.)

-

In his dream, Jon is looking out a window at the patter of rain. Each droplet that lands on the glass is just a moment of a life, a second, an hour, a day. He can see them all there, collecting and then merging and moving. There's Martin, face soft in sleep. There's Tim, balancing coffee. There's Elias on the phone. There's the poetry on tape. There's the dog park. There's the dressing gown. There is Jon, bound, angry, injured, kissing, laughing, eating,working,learningdrivingtalking _living_ \--

The vaster drop slides along the glass, collecting each of them, taking them into itself, another and another, and it grows.

**Author's Note:**

> All feedback will be printed out and physically consumed to sustain me.
> 
> If you'd like to wail at new episodes, excoriate Martin K Blackwood's bad poetry, or chat about worms and trypophilia, you can hit me up on twitter [@tseIiot](https://twitter.com/tseIiot) (or if you're in the tma disco, say hi!)


End file.
